Wiring an old house bedroom for tv, phone and internet

Yes, everything these days is wireless (except tv, at the moment). But what happens in 10 years when wireless is not safe or there’s some other new technology that needs a cord attached? I’m not taking any chances and am running wires to the room just in case this wireless business is just a fad.

The first thing I did is to PULL the wire from the basement to the bedroom. In the business this is called a homerun. Wire is very cheap and you can buy spools at big box stores with hundreds of feet on them. Don’t go cheap on the cable. The cable connectors are notorious for going bad. We had a friend who redid an entire house and buried lots of cable connectors in the walls to save a little money on wire. After 5 years almost all the connectors had gone bad and they basically had to open the walls and do it again. A very messy and expensive lesson was learned.

We are lucky that our walls are open which makes it very easy to do all this wiring. But a good electrician can do almost the same job even if your walls are up. They do amazing things with pulling wire through existing walls.

Here’s the wire coming from the basement into the room. Never run the cable tv wire and wire for electric together in the same holes. The electric wire can cause interference in the cable line so make they’re a few inches apart.

Keep the electric and technology wires separate

I pulled a homerun of cable tv wire into the room but once in the room I wanted to have 2 or 3 different places in the room for the cable connection (some people are now pulling two separate cable homeruns to each room. That’s alot of cable but that’s what they think future technology will require). So I’m using a splicer but the splicer sits inside the box so if it ever goes bad I’ll be able to get to it without taking the wall apart. I’m not using the cat5e cable at the moment so I’m just coiling it up in the box. Oh, and see that orange cable box, yeah, it has no back to it. Perfect for the splicer. These boxes are very easy to find at most hardware stores. Take a look:

And here’s how the connection looks in the basement. Yeah, it’s alot of wire but I’m telling you, don’t cheap out on the wire. And keep it NEAT people.

So, we’re getting there. Next stop is the sheetrock. And I think I’m doing it myself. Grrrrrrr…….